


The language of limbo

by jeanjosten



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Kinda, Mental Health Issues, No Romance, Perfect Court Recovery, Post-Canon, Recovery, References to Depression, Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 09:15:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13384731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeanjosten/pseuds/jeanjosten
Summary: For Jean Moreau, there's no such thing as recovery. He doesn't, simply doesn't want to get better.





	The language of limbo

**Author's Note:**

> I've been asked for Jean angst and I'm preeetty sure it doesn't fit the request at _all_ like pls where is the angst in this but, still, I was listening to Earnestly Yours by Keaton Henson and I _felt things_ so it's better out than in I guess. I'm [wesninskids](http://wesninskids.tumblr.com) on tumblr.

Jean Moreau doesn’t want to get better.

It’s a sad and terrible thing to say, that much he knows—perhaps is that why he doesn’t say it. But there’s a dangerous side effect of unhappiness and he’s been through it over and over again. Some days it feels easier than others—and then, the rest, he can hardly find it in him to open his eyes. He thinks it better to keep them shut, pushing the world away as far as he possibly can, choking reality with deadly hands. No, Jean Moreau doesn’t want to get better, and there’s awful comfort in hoping he will never have to.

He doesn’t understand what the universe wants out of him. He’s there, standing six feet tall over his own misery or lying to his sides quietly breathing out—but it never seems to make sense. Emptiness is a flesh eater and he’s soon going out of body to feed it. And truly, he’s never felt more empty than in deafening crowds, elbowing strange faces to find his way out of reality, of everything people expect of his remains.

Jean moves in his sleep, searches for an open wound to hold on to, for something, for _anything_. He’d take blood and he’d take hell. And when he wakes up, he’s sweaty and feverish, breathing out mouthfuls of quiet distress, trying his best to remember he’s alive. And is he, really, he can’t tell—but perhaps it’s better not to, when familiar darkness embraces him with the sweet tang of loneliness. Jean glances at his sleepy teammates and he chokes, he chokes, he coughs out blood and water too, lungs too full of a hopeful poison for him to breathe. It’s better this way, he thinks. It’s better this way.

 

He can’t really tell Kevin has changed that much. He’s that same arrogant, closed up face, like he’s trying to ward the world off with terrible eyes, like he’s trying to dissuade anyone to hurt him more than he’s already been hurt. It’s a look Jean understands, painfully so—it’s also one he ignores, because Jean is a wordless ghost who has gotten addicted to the pain somewhere along the way.

It isn’t Riko’s and it isn’t his master’s. It’s darker, and lonelier, and it feels _safe_. It’s white nights and entire days trying to close his tired eyes; then losing himself in a bottomless hell of nightmares that never end. And when they do, he wakes up shivering with the need to go back. Where? His bad dreams, perhaps—or the Nest, where he feels like all the shadows are waiting for him still. It’s not the kind of home he’d wanted to have, but it was his home anyways. No amount of recovery could ever heal him from this.

Losing home. Losing it all.

“You look fine,” Kevin nods. They both know it’s a lie, but Jean doesn’t address it. Kevin has never been too good a liar, but that’s okay: if he doesn’t look fine, then he isn’t fine, and if he isn’t fine then perhaps he isn’t crazy yet. As long as they can tell the bad dreams printed on purple eyelids like faded tattoos, as long as they can tell the quiet exhaustion of his breathing and the lingering slowness of his movements, then he’s safe, safe from being expected to be anything but _broken_. That’s what he is, he figures, and he is content with the sudden realization.

If he’s broken, he’s real.

If he’s broken he’s alive he’s there he’s trying. Not too much, but Kevin doesn’t need to know that.

He glances to Jeremy’s tender face meters away, watching them intently with the half-worried half-cheerful face of someone who hopes too much. He wants Jean to get better, he knows; he wants Jean to remember. He doesn’t think there is that much to remember now, and then his entire life feels like a hollow souvenir of too-quick flashes, insights of lives he’s dreamed in his sleep. He never wakes up.

A part of him wants to leave already, to tell Jeremy to stop. He’s not going anywhere with that naïve smile of his, and perhaps he knows that, too, crossing his arms warily like he’d sensed it was a bad idea from the very first second. A hopeless case. Something that shouldn’t be given that much effort, something that Jean couldn’t possibly do.

When Jean glances back to Kevin, he’s staring. He’s staring hard, and it’s sad, like it’s crushing him to see right through all he is. All that’s left of him. And it doesn’t matter how much the bruises have faded, not really; or how healed his cuts and wounds and gashes look; or the easy stance that reeks arrogance and mistrust. Jean’s skin burns with the horror of being found out, of being _there_ , of being watched and known and discovered. He wants to crawl back to his bed. He doesn’t want to do this anymore.

He doesn’t.

Kevin nods, again. There’s pain in his silence and guilt in his stare, but he voices none of them. And when Jean starts to wonder if he’s the only ghost around here, Kevin disappears—he saves Jeremy an apologetic look as he does, and Jean understands, he does—it’s way too soon to reopen this kind of wounds. For someone who likes the hurt and the sting, the bitterness of being torn apart, it’s a surprising sort of helplessness. Maybe Kevin’s willing abandon is the kind of injury you can’t go back from.

It doesn’t really matter. Jean watches until Kevin’s disappeared, and though it hurts to ignore the sorrow of Jeremy’s heavy glance, he too disappears.

 

Neil Josten is the kind of boy only a terrible fool would fall for.

It hadn’t taken him long to realize that much, but Jean—Jean, he was never too good at following the rules. Perhaps Neil Josten was a bet lost before it was even settled, a wish that was never worth making under shooting stars, a tired kind of promise you didn’t really believe in. Despite all this, there was something he couldn’t blame him for: Neil didn’t expect him to get better, and he’d never hope, and he’d never ask, and sitting there his unmoving thigh crushing against his own he had the feeble impression he could breathe again.

“Kevin told me,” is all he says.

“I can’t,” is all he answers.

Jeremy had insisted on bringing Jean to the Foxes’ game, and it wasn’t quite that Jeremy was good at persuasion, it was rather that Jean didn’t have the force to argue. He’d lost that strength long ago, somewhere in Evermore, the moment he’d given up on everything else. His freedom. His will. His individuality and rights for anything one could ask for. Afterwards he wasn’t so much more, and spitting red anger at Neil’s temper had been the closest thing to his ancient self he’d ever gotten to.

Perhaps was it why he’d agreed to put up with the trip, and the game, and Kevin’s terrible frown. Like he was disapproving, like he couldn’t bear the thought of Jean being trapped somewhere he wasn’t anymore. The cage of a mind, the prison of a body; so many miles and cries and worlds keeping Jean Moreau away from the rest. Neil was like a feverish dream, one he’d doubt had ever been real, something troubling piercing through the haze of uncertainty and delirium. It was a hand cutting through the storm, holding its empty palm up to the sky, asking Jean to hang on. It wasn’t much, but it held Neil’s and Jean’s worlds together.

“You don’t have to,” he dismissed. Of course Neil was disappointed—but he couldn’t ask, and he certainly couldn’t blame. People recovering the way he had, it was unrealistic. The Foxes themselves were unrealistic and a meek hope in the rotten depths of his chest. He’d never dare think about them for too long, afraid he’d wake up from a dream and realize they’d never been there all along. Afraid he’d made them up for cold nights and the empty space his dead mother had left in motel beds, right next to him. Happiness never felt granted enough.

“Thank you.” Jean dared to look to the side, and Neil allowed himself to look back. They shared a quiet glance of truce and understanding, the same kind Kevin had but never acknowledged, the pain lodged in their chests and never quite ready to fade. Looking at Kevin reminded him of abandonment—looking at Neil reminded him of being held and helped and healed. Patched up and forgiven. An ally in the midst of a deadly storm none of them were meant to walk away from. Yet, here were they.

He breathed out, deep and stupid, like it was the last time he ever could. He hadn’t realized he was tearing up until Neil’s brows scrunched up, confused and uncomfortable, staring anyway; though there was little he could do, he was done running away.

Neil didn’t tell him not to cry. He didn’t tell him that it was okay to cry, either. He didn’t say anything and it was better off that way.

 

Jean Moreau doesn’t want to get better.

It’s too much and he can’t breathe and he can’t sleep and, god, he can’t live. There’s no living after hell. There’s only surviving.

Slowly, second after second, he relaxes his muscles one after another. And then he’s there, lying on his back and staring at the ceiling, observing darkness like it holds all the answers of the universe and beyond. He doesn’t know what he’s searching for. He doesn’t know if there’s really anything to search for at all.

The strain in his shoulders in the never-ending anxiety of being alive, the quiet punition of years and years of thorough survival. The burn in his eyes is the number of nights he’s let go to waste, choking on cracked memories, losing his mind one dislocated thought after the other.

Jean likes being alone. Jean likes the hurt of not being reached out to, of being forgotten. It doesn’t mean he thrives and blooms and yearns—he likes it still, perhaps because it’s all he’s ever known and, somewhere along the way, he’s forgotten what it feels like to want otherwise. He needs the familiarity of unfairness, the bitter aftertaste of thinking _not today_ , the churn in his guts whenever danger tiptoed its way a little too close. Holding his breath is unnecessary but he still does, and there’s nothing, no one pulling him out of the darkness, because everything’s gone. Riko’s gone. His name, his house, his place. He was someone before, and now he’s Jean, and he’s not sure who Jean is supposed to be.

He thinks he’ll have the time to figure it out, later.

Nobody asks him to get better. Nobody really leaves him alone, either. There’s Jeremy and Alvarez and Kevin and Neil lingering in the shadows off to the side, waiting for him with undying patience, waiting for the day he’ll come out of the darkness on his own. It might take months, years, lifetimes perhaps—but he will get there eventually, and when he will, then, maybe, though it’s a little maybe that hardly shines through the night, Jean Moreau will start to exist instead of surviving.

Maybe, an even tinier maybe, Jean Moreau will want to get better.


End file.
